5. What are the application risks?

5.1 Confusing knowledge with skills

Staff skills are easier to manage, as they are mainly observable skills and know-how that companies have learned to assess objectively, using skills tables or matrices, for example. Experience in this area, backed by quality management standards, has enabled companies to gain a relative mastery of the subject.

The acquisition of knowledge is also a long-standing practice, but largely informal and based on experience acquired over the course of projects and by seniority.

Knowing how a company's products work, and how they can be used, is universally recognized as a prerequisite for successful sales. The question is: How and when do sales people acquire this knowledge? It may be by gradual osmosis through...